women saying, “I have power.” I’m thinking about how empowering this must be to have one of their own speaking with such authority and telling them that they too have power. I’m thinking too of how ridiculous it would seem to me if I were there. I wonder then about my own criticism of these preachers. They all seem to be preaching to the disempowered, and I’m not really their target audience. Maybe these sermons that seem like self-help sprinkled with a few Bible verses, basically Oprah meets Jesus, really do help the powerless feel emboldened to claim some sort of control in their lives. How right is it for an empowered person to criticize the message? Well, in fairness, if Paula and Jesse and Joyce and Creflo were living comfortably middle-class lives like actual clergy folks, it would be harder still to criticize. But the fact of the matter is that their multi-million-dollar lifestyles are funded by the Social Security checks and low wages of their “ministry partners.”
Joyce goes into a little thing on obedience. This is language that I can’t stand, partly because I have huge authority issues and partly because I think “obedience” can be really abusive. I’m realizing that I’m not saying much of this out loud to Ann. I know she has a fondness for this woman, and I don’t want to risk offending my former New Testament professor. Thankfully, I don’t have to feel awkward for long because Ann soon volunteers her own criticism, “Sometimes this prooftexting can be bothersome.” Ann adds, “I appreciate that she can be empowering and her humor can be really self-deprecating, but one of the difficulties I have is how she uses this empowerment language. She is a real leader with something to say, but then she can turn around and talk about her need to be submissive or obedient to her husband. She’s an empowered woman who speaks the Word but then talks about being submissive to Dave. She doesn’t talk about being equally yoked and partners, just the submissive stuff. There’s this dichotomy that disturbs me. Maybe that’s a throwback to her origins. Maybe she thinks she needs to be submissive so she doesn’t lose her audience.”
I find Ann’s comment interesting, especially because Joyce hasn’t really mentioned the whole “men having most-favored-gender-status in the eyes of the Almighty” issue at all. Yet Ann comments on it. Then I realize that Dr. Ann Brock, myself, and “Dr.” Joyce Meyer are all in the same boat in a way. We all were raised in Christian traditions that did not allow women to “have authority over men.” In my case this included forbidding women to usher or even help pass the collection plates. I never understood how handing a man a bulletin or collection plate was an exercise of authority, especially when we all knew that forty-five minutes later at the potluck I’d be handing that same man a plate of fried chicken. Handing him a plate in the “auditorium” (“sanctuary” was too Catholic sounding): no. Handing him a plate of Colonel Sanders: fine.
A list of things we must do in order to have a good relationship with God follows:
Being a victorious, powerful, stomp-on-the-devil’s-head Christian is a full-time job. One little sermon on Sunday morning is not going to keep you in victory. You’re going to have to love the word, live in the word, you’re going to have to put time into your walk with God, you’re going to need to study, you’re going to need to pray, you’re going to need to say no to things that keep you from having time with God. Remember the promises of God are for who-so-ever will.
My issue with this is that the ball is totally in our court. Maybe God is actually at work in the world and we can’t see it, much less participate in it, when we are spending so much time trying to tend our relationship with God alone in our rooms reading our Bibles. Don’t get me wrong. I love the biblical text, and most mornings I actually manage to read the daily office readings. But silently reading the biblical text, much less any text, is a somewhat modern invention, although we think of it as a given. Spiritual discipline as a part of Christian life I have no problem with. It’s (a) doing it so that we will get something back from God, and (b) locating the activity of God in the world solely in some sort of quiet personal interior relationship in the individual that I find problematic.
Joyce Meyer claims that the reason some people are closer to God than others is not because God plays favorites, but because some people are willing to put more time into the relationship than others. There’s a decent crowd for her talk, but she scoldingly claims that there should never be empty seats at something like this, which to me seems to go beyond speaking as a “victorious” Christian and just a few inches into the realm of narcissism.
Going back to the devil, Joyce tells us that “the devil hates you. He wants you to be miserable and to be a Christian with a bumper sticker and no fruit in your life. Think of the mental image most people have of Christians.” Head hanging she shuffles across the stage pathetically saying, “Just trying to make it through till Jesus comes back to get me, can’t wait to get to heaven,” and the crowd cheers as she straightens up and says strongly, “Well, Jesus isn’t like that. He’s the Mighty Warrior, the Captain of the Hosts.” They go wild. I’m wondering which Jesus she’s referring to?
She continues by talking about how we aren’t supposed to resist our circumstances. We are supposed to resist acting like the devil within our circumstances. The goal of every Christian should be to always be stable despite circumstances, not simply happy when things are good and sad when things are bad — which sounds very Buddhist to me. “Paul prayed that they would endure hardship with good temper,” Joyce says, “and I pray that over our ministry partners at least a few times a week.” If we can resist reacting to our circumstances, according to Joyce, then we can be like Jesus, who took a nap in the boat during the storm. He wasn’t bothered while everyone else was freaking out.
I see where she’s coming from in terms of trying to trust God even when things are a bit dodgy in our lives, but this is not the same as needing to not be sad when things are bad or happy when things are good. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He didn’t placidly experience the grief and mourning around the death of a friend with emotionally disaffected distance.
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“ Remember that we love you, and we want God’s best for you,” Joyce says to the folks at home, now from inside a small studio. Once again we see a TBN preacher tell the viewers that (1) God wants good things for you, and (2) “I love you.” Which makes me wonder: How often do these people who watch daytime Christian TV hear these two statements? What disturbs me is that this so-called love between Joyce Meyer and her TV viewers is not pastoral care. You can become a ministry partner and give Joyce Meyer your entire measly pension and she’s still not showing up with a casserole when your mother dies. She’s not showing up ever.
What follows is a commercial for Joyce Meyer’s books, CDs, and wall calendar for “those who need to be uplifted in the Word,” along with a set of “uplifting” coffee mugs. The disturbing merchandising of the hour award has to go, though, to the Everyday Life Bible with Joyce Meyer’s name in very large type at the bottom — Yes, that’s right — of the Bible! (available in bonded leather or paperback). This is Joyce Meyer’s Study Bible based on — wait for it — the Amplified Version! This “Bible” is so many generations removed from the Greek text that it’s about as closely related to the biblical text as is the Farmer’s Almanac or the latest issue of Comso.
The voiceover advertises these Joyce-Meyer-related products with the following claim: “Remember, when you purchase Joyce Meyer products you are helping to spread the gospel all over the world, and there’s no greater gift you can give than to introduce someone to the son of God” — which sounds so very pre-Reformation to me. “When a coin in the coffer rings, another soul from Purgatory springs” was a phrase used to get the subliterate of the sixteenth century to give their money to the ones who, like Joyce Meyer, could tell them what the will of God is and how to save souls. Theologically preying on the desperate and earnest in order to line one’s own pockets is nothing new.
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